transfer

Untold miles of film were shot by amateur filmmakers in the days before YouTube, iPhones, and even the lowly VHS camcorder. A lot of that footage remains to be discovered in attics and on the top shelves of closets, and when you find that trove of precious family memories, you’ll be glad to have this Raspberry Pi enabled frame-by-frame film digitizer at your disposal.

With a spare Super 8mm projector and a Raspberry Pi sitting around, [Joe Herman] figured he had the makings of a good way to preserve his grandfather’s old films. The secret of high-quality film transfers is a frame-by-frame capture, so [Joe] set about a thorough gutting of the projector. The original motor was scrapped in favor of one with better speed control, a magnet and reed switch were added to the driveshaft to synchronize exposures with each frame, and the optics were reversed with the Pi’s camera mounted internally and the LED light source on the outside. To deal with the high dynamic range of the source material, [Joe] wrote Python scripts to capture each frame at multiple exposures and combine the images with OpenCV. Everything is stitched together later with FFmpeg, and the results are pretty stunning if the video below is any indication.

We saw a similar frame-by-frame grabber build a few years ago, but [Joe]’s setup is nicely integrated into the old projector, and really seems to be doing the job — half a million frames of family history and counting.

You can’t feed a piece of wood through a stock inkjet printer, and if you could it’s likely the nature of the material would result in less than optimal prints. But [Steve Ramsey] has a tutorial on inkjet transfers to wood over on his YouTube Channel which is a simple two-step method that produces great results. We really love quick tips like this. Steve explains the entire technique while creating an example project – all in under 2 minutes of video. We don’t want to get your hopes up though – this method will only work on porous absorbent surfaces like bare wood, not on PC boards. We’ve featured some great Inject PCB resistmethods here in the past though.

The transfer technique is dead simple. [Steve] uses the backing from a used sheet of inkjet labels (the shiny part that normally gets thrown away). He runs the backing sheet through his inkjet printer. Since plastic coated backing sheet isn’t porous, the ink doesn’t soak in and dry. He then presses the still wet page onto a piece of wood. The wet ink is instantly absorbed into the wood. A lacquer clear coat seals the image in and really make the colors pop. We’d like to see how this method would work with other porous materials, like fabrics (though the ink probably wouldn’t survive the washing machine).

Click past the break for another example of [Steve’s] work, and two videos featuring the technique.

We’ve covered homebrew PCBfabricationtechniques about a billiontimesbefore. What sets this tutorial apart is that it collects many bits of knowledge otherwise scattered all about the web, and then depicts the entire process on video, from initial printing to cut PCB…because reading about it versus seeing it done are two different things entirely. They give a number of immensely useful tips throughout: choice of materials and where to get them, tools and techniques, and dispelling several myths about these methods (for example, they’re adamant about notusing acetone to clean toner from the PCB). Well worth the 30 minutes to watch. If that’s too much and you’ve been stuck on just one part of the process, the tutorial is in three segments.

Yes, you read that correctly: electronic mail carried by birds. [Ferdinand] tipped us off to this story, which involves combining new and old methods in transferring data. The Unlimited Group, a firm in a remote section of South Africa, transfers loads of encrypted documents to a second office 50 miles away. A pricey broadband connection would take between 6 hours and two days to transfer a standard load (4GB) of data between these locations. On the other hand, Winston (seen above) can complete an equivalent flight within 45 minutes. A memory card is strapped to his leg, and using his wit and instinct, Winston finds his way home. For those without their calculators on hand, Winston’s bandwidth is between 7x and 63x faster than what they had before. If his flash card were to be upgraded to 16GB, that would be an instant fourfold increase on top of current gains. As [Mark] pointed out on the Daily Mail website, homing pigeons still need to be taken back to their departure point.

This solution still has its advantages over a courier: they are lower in cost, they work over longer hours, and have potentially faster delivery speeds. Multiple pigeons can be transported back at once, and released with data as needed.

Pulsar Professional FX has a neat tip on their site for getting a really even toner transfer when making your own PCBs. First, the PCB is cut to size, and the paper is tacked to the board. Then, the PCB is placed paper up onto a dowel and rolled back and forth with the iron. Since the board bends slightly over the dowel the toner sticks evenly to the copper. After that, just remove the paper as usual and etch with your preferred method.